Dark philosophy for dark worlds

Solution

Glimmers of hope in worlds fallen to despair. Branching narratives in which all choices are costly. Quests designed to keep players hanging on by their fingernails. 

I got to work understanding their branching narrative systems and complex game mechanics, as well as digging deep into their vast tomes of lore. Roald Dahl’s famous advice to eschew all those beastly adjectives be damned, Into the Unknown Studios’ games had an intentionally over-the-top Darkest Dungeon-style voice already established. 

The first Into the Unknown game I worked on was Aeon Trespass, a hardcore cooperative boardgame in which positive outcomes are few and far between. The game takes place in a fractured, Ancient Greek-inspired, grimdark world doomed to repeat itself ad infinitum. My first brief was to create a quest in which philosophers were sentenced to death for heresy. I took advantage of my philosophy degree, and fused classical debates of free will vs determinism with the game’s cyclical lore concept. 

Next, Into the Unknown Studios hired me to write chapters for Kingdoms Forlorn, a game set in Germanic-inspired kingdoms each ravaged with a different blight. I’ve provided as a sample my first chapter of Ser Stoneface, a credulous teenager stuck in the petrifying body of a formidable knight. Unlike most in the kingdoms, he still clings to notions of the good and the just.